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'Nobody in the world knows our secret... that I’ve ruined Bev's life, and she's ruined mine.’

Petra’s romantic life has always been a car-crash, and even in her sixties she’s still capable of getting it disastrously wrong. But then she falls in love with Jeremy, an old chum, visiting from abroad. The fatal catch? Jeremy is her best friend’s husband.

But just as Petra is beginning to relax into her happy ever after, she finds herself catapulted to West Africa, and to Bev, her best friend who she’s been betraying so spectacularly. Meanwhile, on opposite sides of the world, two other women are also struggling with the weight of betrayal: Texan Lorrie is about embark on the biggest deception of her life, and in China Li-Jing is trying to understand exactly what it is her husband does on his West African business trips...

It turns out that no matter where you are in the world, everyone has something to hide. Can Bev – can anyone – be trusted?

Quick review

Something to Hide follows the lives of three very different women on three different continents, all somehow connected by the massive but often forgotten continent that is Africa. Who they really are and how they are connected is not immediately made clear, and Moggach takes her time weaving the intricate storylines until the reader finally experiences the satisfying moment of the last puzzle piece fitting into place. While the book is not necessarily fast-paced or action-packed, there is a sense of mystery: who are these people and what are they hiding?

This was not a book I finished quickly, as it really only gripped me in the last third, but Moggach did write some very rich characters that were so real that I didn’t like them as people. The plot had a number of twists and a few shocks, but once you reached the unexpected ending, you could see how all the little signs laid out along the way pointed towards the conclusion. I would recommend this for any contemporary fiction fans with a love for complex characters, international settings a bit of whodunnit.

Not so quick review

I’m not usually a reader of contemporary fiction, but I saw this book in Waterstones’ Read and Review area and thought it looked interesting for a couple of reasons. First, and I probably shouldn’t admit this, but I didn’t know The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel was first a book. As I loved the film, I figured I’d give one of Moggach’s books a try. The second reason is maybe a bit shallow again. I feel like an untethered balloon a lot of the time, and I’m constantly reaching for things to ground me. I’m an African by birth, but the country I’ve lived in the longest is China. Both China and Africa have a part to play in this book, and this made me feel all soft and fuzzy inside. (And yes, I realise Africa is not a country, but I’ll take any African country right now to quell my homesickness!)

Like with The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, the book focuses on an ensemble rather than a single character. It is broken up into four parts of varying lengths, and the chapters typically change with setting and character. We have Petra in London, Li-Jing in Beijing and Lorrie in Texas. In addition to these three women, whose experiences and thoughts we follow in bursts, we also have a few other ‘main’ characters (in that they’re heavily focused on but we don’t know what they’re thinking): Bev, Petra’s oldest friend from school and former flatmate; Jeremy, Bev’s husband whose job has taken him and Bev around the world until they land in an unnamed West African country; and Wang-Lei, Li-Jing’s often-absent husband and highly successful Chinese businessman.

Now you’re probably wondering how these three main women are connected, as none of them know each other at the start of the story. How all of their lives intersect is half the point of the book, and Moggach manages to keep doling out little snippets until we finally get our ‘aha!’ moment towards the end.

BUT the bigger focus of the book is the development of Petra, Bev and Jeremy’s relationships. These three people – and I mean people, as Moggach has really managed to bring them alive – are so incredibly flawed and real and quite terrible, each in their own way. They are jealous and vain and dishonest. I don’t want to give away too much about the shocker plot, but I found myself feeling pity and disgust and anger at various points and for various characters. The adultery (as mentioned in the blurb, so no, this is not a spoiler) at first made me feel sorry for Bev, who I then later felt deserved it, yet I still didn’t condone the situation at all. It was all very confusing, but in a good way (I think?). I didn’t know who or what to believe, and I’m sure this is exactly what Moggach was going for.

Bonus point: adultery is a very difficult thing for me to read about, considering my family’s history, and I have a major bias against any characters who commit it. So when I say that in some ways I could understand what drove Jeremy to do it, you can be pretty sure Moggach did a good job making me feel sorry for the man.

I was actually disappointed that the story focused so heavily on Petra and her relationships with Bev and Jeremy. I would have loved to read more about Lorrie and Li-Jing; they live such different lives to me, one in a poor neighbourhood in Texas while the other lives cooped up and alone in a Beijing apartment. Petra, on the other hand, lives in London (not so far from where I live), while Bev is an expat, a life I’m pretty familiar with. (I’m still an expat, really.) Their storyline was very much secondary, thrown in to make everything a bit more mysterious. I think the only reason it was there was to humanise Wang-Lei.

As for the world-building, we only really get a feel for London and the mysterious country in West Africa. (I tried Googling the place names and nothing came up.) Texas was hot, Beijing was heavily polluted – that’s pretty much all we get about them. I don’t know how I feel about Moggach just labelling the most frequently described setting as West Africa, as then it seems like she’s making a sweeping generalisation about all the countries in West Africa. Everywhere is dry and dusty and hot. That being said, I could definitely imagine the settings described, so maybe Moggach succeeded here, too.

One of the things I really want to applaud Moggach for is featuring older characters, and not having them seem ‘old’ and stereotypically grandparenty, sitting in the armchair as background characters, chiming in only to share their wisdom and chocolate chip cookies. Petra was a single woman nearing retirement age, working and trying to find love while her children and grandchildren lived on other continents. She had a sense of humour and was, in a way, still trying to figure herself out. She was relatable to me in some ways, despite the fact that our age difference is almost three decades. Well done, Moggach, for writing an older woman I could understand.

Before I wrap things up, I want to just give you potential readers a warning. There is profanity and sex (not graphic) in this book. The word that makes me want to warn you (begins with a C) is one that I find completely disgusting and can’t bring myself to say out loud. However, after the initial shock of seeing it in print (a few times), I could appreciate that a) it’s something often said in England and b) probably fit the situation and emotions the characters were going through at the time.

Overall, the book was interesting and a great exploration of character. It’s plot was a bit slow in the beginning, but it became more and more twisted and impelling at the end of Part One, which was the first big WHAT moment. The characters were complex and slowly revealed themselves to the reader, particularly Bev, who ended up being both exactly who I expected and not who I expected at all. By the end, you won’t necessarily like the characters, but you’ll feel like they probably exist (with different names) in the real world. You’ll find yourself wondering, as the pages turn, who to trust and what to believe, and I’m pretty sure you won’t see the ending coming.

If you’re interested in contemporary fiction, character development and a bit of whodunnit, you can get a hold of Something to Hide on the 2nd of July.

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